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Hello, denizens of Trench Wars.
There's another extensive post coming from me, may God have mercy on us. Thus prepare yourselves, scrubs, if you are up for reading a very boring post from an extremely irksome person.
Due to utter boredom I have decided to write a very simplified guide on this subject to hopefully help the regular players to learn how to capture videos of this or any other game. It is very simple if you have the right tools, and by tools I mean programs, and a decent computer -- aside from the whole process being slightly time consuming. This guide will feature various different points, such as:
1.0: basics of how to capture video files
2.0: how to render the uncompressed video file(s) you captured
3.0: how to upload the video file you rendered to a video streaming site such as YouTube or Veoh
Hopefully after reading all of this garbage you have learned how to record future TWL/TWDT/TWD videos, and are willing to do it to promote the game. My objective with this thread/post is to make it possible for everyone to learn how to record videos for the upcoming TWL Season 16 and hopefully uploading them to YouTube or a similar video streaming site.
First and foremost you need a decent or good computer if you are hoping to capture and render excellent quality video files for us to watch. If your system specifications are similar or better than mine then you will have no problem capturing flawless or close to perfect quality video in most cases with FRAPS and Camtasia; however if your computer specifications are way worse mine then the sad fact will be that you can't expect to record high quality video files, thus you will have to settle with subpar or decent quality. Below this paraphrase you will see the basic information of my computer (the important specifications that include RAM, GPU, processor and operating system) which you can use to compare your computer with; to do this simply search and run DXDiag to get your system specifications.
Now, if you do have a good computer then you are set to record some damn high quality videos for the community. Below this you will see a screenshot of FRAPS, and I will explain the settings in detail below the screenshot. I would recommend anyone that wants to record high quality videos to purchase or download FRAPS from a torrent site. Unfortunately FRAPS has a huge setback that makes it awful to use at times, the file sizes are enormous when recording with FRAPS if you want excellent quality videos. You will probably end up with like 10 different parts of roughly 4 GB files when recording a longer video, thus you really need to free up some HD space and be willing to wait a bit longer when rendering videos.
Now there is another good alternative and that would be Camtasia, but I would say that's something for a more experienced user. It has way more settings to tweak around with and it's way less new user friendly. Also, all the files you capture with it will have the file extension .CAMREC which you can only render with Camtasia Studio, thus you can't use any other rendering program (such as Sony Vegas 10) to render the files. On the bright side the file sizes are minimal despite the flawless quality (can be roughly 500MB for a 25 minute video compared to the 30 GB FRAPS will give you) thus it's really a great alternative if you want to save some HD space.
Video Capture Settings - ideally you should run these at 60 fps and full-size; FRAPS will force your game to run at that FPS. full-size means the game will record at the resolution you're running at (e.g. 1680x1050 video will be 1680x1050 instead of the 840x525 half-size gives you). If your computer can't handle those settings and you want smaller sized files, then simply put the fps to 30 and record it as half-size. but be warned, the quality will drop a lot.
Sound Capture Settings - self-explanatory. just tick record Win7 sound as stereo if you want to record sounds, untick it if you don't want to record sounds. also, if you want to do live commentary then simply put record external input.
Other Settings - hide mouse cursor in video is pretty obvious. no one wants to see your cursor move around. however, here's an important thing that in my opinion has to be enabled: force lossless RGB capture. it will make the capture show everything with the right colors and better quality. trust me on this one, it will look much better. don't bother with loop buffer length. you may also want to go to the FPS section and disable the FPS counter top-left.
Now when the settings are set to that, just launch the game in full screen (it'll greatly improve the quality compared to recording windowed mode, sadly) and hit the F9 key to start recording. when the game finishes, simply hit F9 again and it'll stop recording. now you can find the file at C:\Fraps\Movies unless you changed the folder location.
Now that the easy part is over, it's time to start with the slightly more complicated stuff. I will explain how to render with Sony Vegas 10.0 and what are in my opinion the best settings to render with. First off with the basics.
Go to File > Open and then locate your FRAPS folder for your movie files that you captured earlier. Now, select all of them and hit open to add them to your project. When that is done, drag the video files to the project below with video and sound info, and it's set. Here's a screenshot of what it would look like with two videos attached to the file.
Now that you miraculously managed to drag the files in the right order, it's time to save and render the file. Go to File > Render as and set File Name to whatever you want (e.g. TWLD Season 16 Thunder vs Fierce) then hit the "Custom" button below Save/Cancel. You will get a window like this below:
Frame Size - select custom frame size and add your resolution you recorded with to the width and height sections below the drop-down menu.
Frame Rate - if you used my FRAPS settings then you must select the double NTSC (60 FPS) setting or the quality will look choppy and awful.
Field Order - this setting doesn't matter that much, just leave it to none.
Pixel aspect ratio - 1,0000 is the way to go.
Video Format - my personal favorite is TechSmith Screen Capture Codec; not sure if it's there by default but if you have it, definitely use that one. Go to configure next to that and set the setting to Better Compression instead of Faster Compression.
[U]Other Video Settings[/B] - tick interleave every seconds and set that to 0,250. leave other options, aside from create an OpenDML compatibile file, unticked.
Audio Format - PCM uncompressed tends to work the best, and set the sample rate to 48000 HZ and bit depth to 16 or 24. channels to stereo, obviously.
When all the settings are set to those, simply hit OK and save the file as whatever you named and it will being rendering the file. This may take a long while but it will be worth it if you did it properly.
I will update this post when I bother with more info, but that was the very simplified guide on how to get flawless quality videos if you have the computer for it.
TO COME:
- how to upload the finished project on youtube
- how to upload the video to a file sharing site similar to mediafire
- detailed information on all kinds of shit
- possibly an extensive guide on how to use Camtasia as it's probably a better alternative for those who are willing to do some extra work to save some HD space.
there, roughly 40 minutes of my life was wasted. fuck me.
There's another extensive post coming from me, may God have mercy on us. Thus prepare yourselves, scrubs, if you are up for reading a very boring post from an extremely irksome person.
Due to utter boredom I have decided to write a very simplified guide on this subject to hopefully help the regular players to learn how to capture videos of this or any other game. It is very simple if you have the right tools, and by tools I mean programs, and a decent computer -- aside from the whole process being slightly time consuming. This guide will feature various different points, such as:
1.0: basics of how to capture video files
1.1: which programs you should be using to capture video files
2.0: how to render the uncompressed video file(s) you captured
2.1: what different programs are available for you for rendering
2.2: what different rendering options are available for you to use
3.0: how to upload the video file you rendered to a video streaming site such as YouTube or Veoh
3.1: how to upload the video file to a file hosting site
Hopefully after reading all of this garbage you have learned how to record future TWL/TWDT/TWD videos, and are willing to do it to promote the game. My objective with this thread/post is to make it possible for everyone to learn how to record videos for the upcoming TWL Season 16 and hopefully uploading them to YouTube or a similar video streaming site.
1.0 & 1.1: Capturing Video
First and foremost you need a decent or good computer if you are hoping to capture and render excellent quality video files for us to watch. If your system specifications are similar or better than mine then you will have no problem capturing flawless or close to perfect quality video in most cases with FRAPS and Camtasia; however if your computer specifications are way worse mine then the sad fact will be that you can't expect to record high quality video files, thus you will have to settle with subpar or decent quality. Below this paraphrase you will see the basic information of my computer (the important specifications that include RAM, GPU, processor and operating system) which you can use to compare your computer with; to do this simply search and run DXDiag to get your system specifications.
Code:
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-BIT Processor: Intel(R) Core i5-2300 @ 2.80 GHz (Quadcore) RAM: 8 GB GPU: Radeon HD 6870
Now there is another good alternative and that would be Camtasia, but I would say that's something for a more experienced user. It has way more settings to tweak around with and it's way less new user friendly. Also, all the files you capture with it will have the file extension .CAMREC which you can only render with Camtasia Studio, thus you can't use any other rendering program (such as Sony Vegas 10) to render the files. On the bright side the file sizes are minimal despite the flawless quality (can be roughly 500MB for a 25 minute video compared to the 30 GB FRAPS will give you) thus it's really a great alternative if you want to save some HD space.
Video Capture Settings - ideally you should run these at 60 fps and full-size; FRAPS will force your game to run at that FPS. full-size means the game will record at the resolution you're running at (e.g. 1680x1050 video will be 1680x1050 instead of the 840x525 half-size gives you). If your computer can't handle those settings and you want smaller sized files, then simply put the fps to 30 and record it as half-size. but be warned, the quality will drop a lot.
Sound Capture Settings - self-explanatory. just tick record Win7 sound as stereo if you want to record sounds, untick it if you don't want to record sounds. also, if you want to do live commentary then simply put record external input.
Other Settings - hide mouse cursor in video is pretty obvious. no one wants to see your cursor move around. however, here's an important thing that in my opinion has to be enabled: force lossless RGB capture. it will make the capture show everything with the right colors and better quality. trust me on this one, it will look much better. don't bother with loop buffer length. you may also want to go to the FPS section and disable the FPS counter top-left.
Now when the settings are set to that, just launch the game in full screen (it'll greatly improve the quality compared to recording windowed mode, sadly) and hit the F9 key to start recording. when the game finishes, simply hit F9 again and it'll stop recording. now you can find the file at C:\Fraps\Movies unless you changed the folder location.
2.0, 2.1 & 2.2: Rendering Captured Video
Now that the easy part is over, it's time to start with the slightly more complicated stuff. I will explain how to render with Sony Vegas 10.0 and what are in my opinion the best settings to render with. First off with the basics.
Go to File > Open and then locate your FRAPS folder for your movie files that you captured earlier. Now, select all of them and hit open to add them to your project. When that is done, drag the video files to the project below with video and sound info, and it's set. Here's a screenshot of what it would look like with two videos attached to the file.
Now that you miraculously managed to drag the files in the right order, it's time to save and render the file. Go to File > Render as and set File Name to whatever you want (e.g. TWLD Season 16 Thunder vs Fierce) then hit the "Custom" button below Save/Cancel. You will get a window like this below:
Frame Size - select custom frame size and add your resolution you recorded with to the width and height sections below the drop-down menu.
Frame Rate - if you used my FRAPS settings then you must select the double NTSC (60 FPS) setting or the quality will look choppy and awful.
Field Order - this setting doesn't matter that much, just leave it to none.
Pixel aspect ratio - 1,0000 is the way to go.
Video Format - my personal favorite is TechSmith Screen Capture Codec; not sure if it's there by default but if you have it, definitely use that one. Go to configure next to that and set the setting to Better Compression instead of Faster Compression.
[U]Other Video Settings[/B] - tick interleave every seconds and set that to 0,250. leave other options, aside from create an OpenDML compatibile file, unticked.
Audio Format - PCM uncompressed tends to work the best, and set the sample rate to 48000 HZ and bit depth to 16 or 24. channels to stereo, obviously.
When all the settings are set to those, simply hit OK and save the file as whatever you named and it will being rendering the file. This may take a long while but it will be worth it if you did it properly.
I will update this post when I bother with more info, but that was the very simplified guide on how to get flawless quality videos if you have the computer for it.
TO COME:
- how to upload the finished project on youtube
- how to upload the video to a file sharing site similar to mediafire
- detailed information on all kinds of shit
- possibly an extensive guide on how to use Camtasia as it's probably a better alternative for those who are willing to do some extra work to save some HD space.
there, roughly 40 minutes of my life was wasted. fuck me.
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